SEARCH
Guest Workers Begin Hunger Strike for Justice |
|
 |
||||
|
||||
Guest workers who risked everything to come from India and work on the Gulf Coast, only to find abuse and injustice, now are risking the only thing they have left—their lives—to gain the justice they have been denied on the job.
The water-only hunger strike began today in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, with six of the more than 500 workers who came to this country beginning in 2006 in what turned out to be a human-trafficking scheme under the guise of the H-2B guest worker program. Some 30 more workers will join the hunger strike in two waves, on May 21 and on May 28.
The workers, who are welders and pipe fitters, paid $20,000 to recruiters who promised permanent residency and citizenship under the H-2B guest worker program, which business interests want to expand. When they got to this country, they say their employer, Signal International, held them in modern-day forced labor at its shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. Signal makes the huge floating oil rigs for the offshore fields in the Gulf.
The Indian guest workers found out management’s promises were false—there were never any green cards. Instead, they were forced to live in prison-like conditions, with 24 people to a room, paying $1,050 a month each for the room.
When they tried to form a union, the company sent armed guards to detain some of the organizers, then fired them without cause.
Hunger striker Muruganantham Kandhasami told a press conference in front of the White House today:
We escaped Signal’s labor camps and went straight to the Department of Justice, and yet we are being treated like criminals, living under the threat of deportation every day. In the tradition of Mahatma Ghandi, we are risking our lives for the right to participate in an investigation that will bring the real criminals to justice: Signal and the recruiters.
The workers say they will continue the hunger strike until the U.S. Congress holds hearings into the abuses of the H-2B guest worker program. They also are demanding that Signal International be brought to justice and that the Indian government takes steps to protect future workers coming to the United States. Another hunger striker, Paul Konar, says:
They have to change the system called H-2B to benefit the workers. Otherwise, workers who come after us are going to suffer the same way.
Ron Ault, president of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department, told the crowd that Signal International’s actions are just the tip of the iceberg.
Many other shipbuilding companies act like the Gulf Coast is a lawless, no-man’s land. As if busting unions was not enough, these companies bring in foreign guest workers, bypassing U.S. workers, then treating the H-2B workers as if they were subhuman.
Our government needs to know what is happening to guest workers in the Gulf Coast and who is doing it to them.
In March 2007, we noted a report by Lindsay Beyerstein and Larisa Alexandrovna on The Raw Story that highlighted the extent to which the nation’s guest worker program is broken and featured the mistreatment of workers at the same Signal facility in Pascagoula. At that time, six guest workers from India in the country on H-2B visas were rousted out of bed at 3 a.m. by armed company security guards and held prisoner in the TV room of the Signal shipyard. The company said it was holding the six men on the advice of U.S. immigration officials, in an attempt to forcibly deport them. But two of the Indian workers, Joseph Jacob and Sabu Lal, said they believed the raid was Signal’s reaction to worker complaints.
AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt told the press conference today:
These courageous workers have clearly shown us that the H-2B program is a template for exploitation, and that we need to work together to expose the abuses of the program. By denying workers their labor rights, this program lowers wages and working conditions, to the detriment of all workers.
The AFL-CIO supports this strike and will stand in solidarity with the workers through this struggle.
The workers carried “I Am A Man” signs that echoed those carried by striking sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed 40 years ago helping the Memphis workers in their struggle to gain recognition for their union. Konar says the Indian workers struggle is the same as that of the civil rights struggles in the 1960s.
Not only is it the same cause and the same issue, but we are willing to go in the same steps they took to get what we’re looking for.
You can help the hunger strikers by making a donation to their struggle. Please send checks to the National Immigration Law Center, 3435 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 2850, Los Angeles, Calif. 90010. Put NOWCRJ/IWC on the subject line.
If you are in the Washington, D.C., area, please visit and show your support for the hunger strikers in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Click here to follow the hunger strike and for more information on the Indian workers’ struggle.
9 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Just what is it these people want?Give them a ride back to India and be done with it.They came here to SCAB on honest hard working AMERICANS end of story.I won’t feel sorry for them because they did a stupid thing.I think Barnum said it there’s sucker born every minute.
The AFL-CIO can pound salt! This is the very issue that organized labor should be fighting against. These shipyard jobs could be good union jobs, but not as long as the people we elect continue to let immigrants work illegally or with visa’s. The list just grows and grows, meatpacking plants, construction, warehousing, you name it, whether you like it or don’t like it we are not the greatest country in the world anymore, and its not are damn job to take care of the world anymore. Hey Democrats, hey organized labor, start representing working Americans and quit pandering for the immigrant vote!
I agree brother. Perhaps the AFL-CIO has forgotten what the ‘A’ stands for? Its too bad they got screwed.
‘They don’t have to go home, but they can’t stay here.’
Mass immigration is a direct attack against the American working class. I don’t need to say about ‘illegals.’ Get out!
Working people are everywhere the victims of multi-national capitalism. American workers are now forced to compete against the lowest paid workers throughout the world.
Always there is only one thought in the capitalist: How can I make
maximum profit. If local “human resources” (i.e. human beings) are unwilling or unavailable to work at slave wages, then lets either move our factory to China.
If this is not possible lets “import” by any means necessary. to bring in this slave labor. Thus labor is imported in Katrina. Thus peasant farmers (unable to compete against dumped corn from the U.S. under NAFTA) and working people from Mexico (jobs from Mexico have also gone to China!) are forced into the United States by the millions.
This “class war” attack upon working people is happening throughout the world! Privatization is another technique for enriching the wealthy. The NAFTA treaties, the IMF force local governments to privatize the meager government programs that countries have provided (public utilities such as water, electricity, and institutions such as public education, public health, etc.
This is an international “genocide of the unproitable”. If you cannot afford
privatized services under this new anti-social corporatist system, you will simply die for lack of health care, potable drinking water, etc.
In the United States, with about 47 million not having health insurance, it is estimate that between 18,000 and 100,000 die prematurely every year for this reason.
Most tragically, most working people see the destruction of their families and children as a personal problem. There is no national party for working people to fight back as the Democratic Party is absolutely bankrupt and complicit in this
destruction.
There is no national media that informs working people about what is happening to them. The organized labor movement, about the only group with sufficient funds, has not taken up this essential task.
THE FACT IS THAT THE SIMPLE MINDED TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IS NOT CAPABLE OF DEFENDING WORKING PEOPLE AT THE JOB OR DEFENDING THEIR ESSENTIAL “BENEFITS”. Employers don’t want to pay for health insurance, retirement benefits, overtime, etc. Moreover, they can’t be forced to under present economic conditions.. Go on strike? They will simply shut down and move out. American working people, even organized labor, cannot compete against slave labor and immigrant labor from third world countries.
Benefits secured through labor contracts must now be achieved politically through electing representatives of working people to government and make into law universal health insurance, free public education through college, etc.
To do this we must end wars for profit, re-instate taxes on the wealthy, end privatization of social services, etc.
excerpt:”They have to change the system called H-2B to benefit the workers. ” IMO this is a perfect opportunity to END the program altogether and PUT AMERICA BACK TO WORK! I wouldn’t be afraid to bet that there are PLENTY of welders and pipefitters in this country who could use the work. It’s time big business stopped pissing all their money away on their CEOs and started paying Americans a living wage again!
I’ve heard of similar H-2B horror stories. What Signal International has basically done is not only exploit the workers who came here for a better way of life, (if that is even possible in this country any more), but they are also guilty of human rights’ violations and oppression upon minorities. They basically stoled the 20K from each person and entrapped them into a slavery situation. There is no justification for this. THIS IS HOW COMPANIES ARE ALLOWED TO OPERATE HERE IN AMERICA. Makes you sick, doesn’t it.
So many corporations here and abroad view workers like expendable chattel. When people of other countries realize what is really happening here in this country, they will no longer struggle to come here, and this will not be a good thing - contrary to what some may think.
Many people throughout the world still believe that the US is the epitome of democracy, and it is something others have envied and wished to be a part of for a very long time. To know that we no longer have that edge, and that our country is just as guilty of exploitation, social inequality and oppression is something that the rest of the world will eventually come to understand, and this will negate our standing with the rest of the world, and we will lose all credibility.
If we are to remain a democracy, we must do everything in our power to preserve it. If we can’t, all these little things that are happening in this country will add up to very dangerous repercussions politically, economically and socially. We must not allow this.
Is this any way to treat a guest? Note to Corporate America: Have you forgotten your manners? Did you ever learn any?
Bob Simpson
The BobboSphere
Another group of illegal aliens declares, ” The H-2B program must be changed to protect the workers.” Great idea! Deport them immediately back to their own native country of India, Illiminate the H-2B program altogether and protect the worker, the American worker!
To prove we’re not all bad as Americans, the government should force Signal International to rebate their money and pay for their trip back home. After all, the company lied to them but what else is new?
If this is truly an abuse of the guest worker program it is a separate issue from unchecked illegal immigration. The underlying cause is the same, businesses looking for the cheapest labor they can find. Now why is that? Because the labor movement has been so successful in the past and the American worker has reached a certain level of success. That level of success has been under attack because of greed, having to compete in a global social environment and apathy of the American worker.
Organized labor is not a lean mean fighting machine right now. There is just as much bureaucracy in labor as there is in government. We can talk an issue to death but it seems to take for ever to take action. Politics and political correctness will be our downfall. In this country we have a right to be offended so if we have to work within government to achieve our goals then we need people in government who say what they mean and mean what the say. The only other option is civil unrest. Large masses of American citizens who are fed up with the way the politicians are running this country taking to the streets in protest. People willing to stand up and take action like the Minutemen on our southern boarder. What if 10,000 union members joined these protesters in D.C.? They are not illegal aliens they are foreign workers expecting to take part in a valid government program and were held captive by a company violating the law.
Having outrageous fines for companies who hire illegal aliens or abuse the H-2B program is the way to tax the wealthy not using the income tax system. Everyone in this country pays to much taxes, the government needs smaller and stop spending so much money.